Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Lately, I've been hunted by Subaru Bajas, those half-car non-trucks that have usurped the Brat as the vehicle for folks who just can't make up their mind. I don't know why the Bajas have chosen me, but everywhere I look, there they are. I'm just that attractive, perhaps.

In particular, it's the gray Bajas that seem to seek me out. A whole pack of bleak, gray Subaru Bajas, out for blood or romance or who-knows-what. I must've seen a dozen just in the last week or so.

Today, I was pondering this odd situation while driving into town. It conjured a vision in my mind's eye, sugar-plum-style: the Bajas, led by their gray leaders, sniffing me out wherever I go. And it was then -- speak of the devil -- I rounded a corner and passed yet another Subaru Baja, coinciding almost exactly with my woolgathering about them.

There's an entry for my synchronicity log, I thought.

However, this incident wasn't yet deserving of a blog post, for a post of every such experience I have would make my blog read like a book. No, it was only a short time later that the Baja incident was upgraded to blog-worthy.

I had just entered town, on a back street behind a supermarket, when I was thinking of my passing the Baja on a blind bend a split second after thinking of Bajas. I was replaying it in my head, in order to make sure I wasn't injecting miracle into a simple coincidence, and this led to the thought of Well, the Baja I passed wasn't a gray one. Because it wasn't: that Baja had been black, and at the time, I'd been thinking primarily of gray ones. So if I had yet another thought-synchronicity on my hands, then why hadn't that last Baja been gray, huh?

No sooner had this thought crossed my mind than a car appeared on a side street, stopping to let me pass: another Subaru Baja, coinciding perfectly with my thoughts as if cued. Except, this one was gray.

(It had pulled up alongside the supermarket I was driving the length of, as to be invisible to me until it rounded the market's corner and stopped. Just like the black one of minutes before, totally invisible to me around the bend, so that neither of my Baja-thoughts could've been triggered by sight of the cars, even subconsciously.)

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Now available from A.A. Garrison: the third volume in the Shining Horrific series of horror-story collections!

Blurb:

Behold, the third installment in The Shining Horrific series of short story collections!

Author A.A. Garrison once more transports us to the shadows with his "darkly radiant" brand of the macabre. Adhering to the standard set by the original two books, Garrison takes a passionate, cerebral spin on life's grisly side -- horror that asks questions, and often gets answers. If Stephen King collaborated with Stephen Hawking, the results would fit the Shining Horrific rubric.

Highlights from this collection's 16 stories:

> Combine self-delusion with a raging hunger, and even a trifling joke can lead to murder ("Wash Me")
> A pickpocket robs a wizard and gets more than he bargained for ("Everyone Says I'm A Great Guy")
> At a secluded village in the south of India, Ram Chaknah is at last initiated into the yearly hillside ritual ("The Hillside")
> When a benevolent, time-traveling alien visits, Jazz Pendleton's life is changed forever ("Déjà Vu")
> Meet Mr. Easter, a soulless killer-saint with a strange but necessary calling ("Variations of Soullessness")
> Brandon is a werewolf of sorts, but this isn't a werewolf story ("The Lunar Cycle")
> A brother's service to his disabled sister comes to a violent end ("Freedom")
> Because he's a hypnotist, the narrarator recognizes the circus's fiendish hypnotism; but the others aren't hypnotists ("Not A Circus")
> When an all-powerful being from Beyond needs its ego stroked, bad things happen to us lowly humans ("The Instrument Is Tuned")

Monday, November 10, 2014

At one point, I reached a page about gunshots, how some were heard but went unreported.

I wouldn't report a gunshot, either, I thought, considering how many there are around here, from target practice and the like.

Immediately following this thought, a gunshot rang out from nearby -- the first in days, when it had previously been silent. I gave pause, smiling, and made no report.

But this incident wasn't finished, for not a minute later, it happened again: two paragraphs down, precisely when I read "the sound of gunfire," a second shot sounded, coinciding in perfect sync. I couldn't have timed the two events better had I a gun rigged to a button.

Those were the first two gunshots I'd heard that day, and the only until later on, when I was past the book's mention of gunshots.